All posts tagged Models

I started to work on the diorama for my JS-2 tank. I wanted to keep it small and simple, but as always I got carried away a bit, adding lots of details in the rubbles. The scene is supposed to take place right after the fall of Berlin.

I had a white plastic wedding cake column in my parts bin (leftover from some wargaming terrain I did a while ago). I decided to use this in the diorama as a way to suggest the destruction of fine german classical architecture. A library? A bank? Who knows…

Still, something was missing to really coin it. This small diorama had to evoque the fall or Berlin (and I didn’t want to use another nazi flag, as I did in this other diorama). So I sculpted a nazi eagle emblem, the kind of wich was afixed to many building facades in large german cities during the 3rd Reich. I used Apoxy sculpt and fine tools (including a needle) to sculpt, and did it while listening to an audio book of H.P. Lovecraft novels.

I know. No link. But somehow the combination of sculpting and listening to cosmic horror stories is really relaxing for the brain 🙂

Anyway, enjoy the pics for now: I’ll be painting all this and posting the results in early 2019.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Strips of cork. I cut them in small “bricks”, sanded the edges and glued them one by one. I took A LONG TIME! But the end result is very good.

The plastic column was butchered with a rotary tool…

I used epoxy putty to fill the hollow parts. With a saw, I also scribed the horizontal lines, to add a touch of realism.

More expoxy putty work.

The cock pavement is completed. I test fit the elements…

Work is started on the nazi eagle (Apoxy Sculpt).

The cobblestone is grouted with drywall compound.

With a heated needle, I made some holes on the column. I then used my X-Acto to carve around the holes to simulate bullet impacts on the stone.

Various debris are then glued to the base using white glue and wood filler.

The debris, from another angle.

The finished eagle. When it will be painted, I plan to but a chain near it to suggest that it might have being torn from the facade…

Again , the rubbles: bits of cork, styrofoam, pieces of wood, a some plastic bits.

Top view.

Test fitting the JS-2. The miniatures are to be repainted (I don’t like the green of their uniforms)

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I needed a break from painting tanks. And I wanted to work on something simple…

So I dug up an old model from the “maybe-I’ll-finish-it-someday” stack: A 1:100 AT-AT from MPC. This model was produced in 1989 and is quite decent, even straight out of the box.

The kit was slightly damaged (missing a piece on a leg and some other bits) and the barrels of the two slim canons were broken. I had to dot a little bit of scratch building to fix all this, but nothing serious.

The model was painted in pale grey then heavily weathered with oil paints and washes.

The large rocks on the base are made from bark and cork, while smaller rocks are just real pebbles and coarse sand.

The snowspeeder that came with the kit (in fact, there was 2) is not very detailed by modern standards, but with a good paint job and weathering it looks ok.

The snow was made by mixing Woodland Scenic Snow with Matt Mod Podge in a “peanut butter like” consistency. It was then applied onto the base with a small spatula. The models were pressed on the mix. Once the surface began to dry, I used a hobby knife and a tooth pick to shape the snow around the models and near the rocks.

Once the snow was completely cured, I sprayed small amounts of white paint (just a mist, really) on the whole scene to tie up the different tones in that “frosty” winter feel…

The smoke for the snowspeeder crash is simply a small ball of synthetic pillow stuffing material, lightly painted with the airbrush. The fibers are a bit coarse to my taste, so I might replace that little detail one day.

As for now, I consider this project done. I’m satisfied with the overall look of the scene.

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Right after Christmas, the urge to build a new model was really strong for me, but I wanted to build something simple and quick for a change.

On my shelves stood an old Panzerkampfwagen II Ausf. F/G from Tamiya. A kit produced in… 1971! The kit includes 5 figures. I only intend to use the tank commander figure.

Just to give you an idea of the simplistic, toy like nature of the kit: There’s almost as many miniatures parts in the box than actual tank parts…

Vinyl tracks (without details on the inside), molded on suspension, tool clamps that are just plain rectangles, no hole in the barrel, etc… The kit is way under modern standards and would require a tremendous amount of work to make it really accurate.

But I really didn’t want to put all the efforts (and after market products) required: I just wanted a fun build.

I decided to build and paint that little monster as is, OOB. No fuss. The only modifications I did were to drill holes in the main gun and machine-gun barrels and fill the gaps at the bottom of the hull with plasticard.

The decals gave me serious headaches: They were very thick, yellowish and did not stick well to the model. A huge chunk of the big letter R on one side of the turret even broke of during weathering. I made a Nazi flag from epoxy putty to hide this.

The diorama was pretty basic and quick to make. Again: no fuss.

The whole thing, diorama included, was built in little less than 2 weeks.

It’s not 100% done:

Tank commander figure is currently drying (oil paints…)

Some details in weathering need fixing (the antenna rack for example was made of wood on the real tank and I want this to be more obvious in my paint job)

I want to ad a bit of oil spills on some wheels and on the engine deck

Overall, it was a fun project. And in the end, it doesn’t look so bad for such an old kit.

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Almost done! Some minor details to fix: add an antenna, add some mud on the mud scrapers near the drive wheels and glue the tracks to the wheels.

I don’t think I will be able to create sag in the tracks since they are too tight… I should have known better not to glue the front wheels, wich act as track tensioners. Once the tracks will be glued to the wheels, at least they will stop “levitating”…